THREE RIVERS — Friday night, Amber Brunmeier ran the cross country course in her mind after she and teammate Jenna Matthews formed a plan.

They stuck to the plan while they ran the 6k course for real on Saturday, helping Western Michigan University to a sixth-place finish at the Mid-American Conference Championships at Pine View Golf Course.

Toledo’s Ari Fisher repeated as MAC champ with a time of 20:05.8, leading the Rockets to the team title.

Senior Sam Tomerlin, a former Allegan athlete, was WMU’s top runner at 21:18.1, good enough for ninth overall.

“We always do a visual in our heads the night before, with my feet up, watching TV,” said Brunmeier, a red-shirt senior from Holland.

“Jenna and I were like, we’re gonna kick it when we get to the trees, and that’s exactly what we did. I went and she came with me. If I didn’t have my teammate, it would have been way harder, so it was awesome.”

“Normally I’m around 50th (place),” she said. “My first three years were pretty consistent. I wasn’t getting any better.

“During indoor and outdoor track last year, I started improving.”

Sam Tomerlin

Tomerlin finished 15th last year, missing all-MAC by two-tenths of a second.

This year, she’ll be second-team all-MAC.

“It feels soooo good,” she said. “Compared to last year, it’s exciting, being my last year of cross country, too. After this indoor, outdooor track, one more season of outdoor next year.

“After that, I’m definitely looking to road races to keep going.”

She said a year of putting in more miles than she had ever run before helped her reach the top-10 level.

“Coach (Taryn Sheehan) is great at what she does. She pushes us and knows what works for each one of us. I needed somebody to push me.”

Head coach Kelly Lycan was happy with his team’s improvement, but then mused: “It’s funny how sports are. You think to yourself going in, that, OK, if we do this, we’re gonna be satisfied.

“Then you always think to yourself, Ah, if we could have just .... We finished sixth, which is a huge improvement over last year (10th), but Eastern beat us by two points for fifth place. We’re sorta satisfied, but not really.”

He said conditioning helped his runners.

“They really looked strong at the end of the race,” he said. “The last thousand meters, they were picking people up and spitting them out.”

Lycan said the young runners were a key.

“Rachel Whitley (sophomore from Leroy), did a great job today,” he said.“One person who was huge for us today was Jeriesha Tucker (sophomore from Detroit). She was our fifth runner. She was a converted 400, 800-meter runner and I think we indoctrinated her today. She’s now graduated into the class of being a real cross country runner.”

By the 3k mark, Fisher led by 100 meters. She said she didn’t mind at all be out front all alone.